Tesla’s $500M Share Sale, With $20M Purchased by Elon Musk

Eric Wesoff is Editor-at-Large at Greentech Media. Prior to joining GTM, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields.

His expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley's premier venture capitalists.

Tesla announced today that it intends to offer, subject to market and other conditions, $500 million of additional shares of common stock in an underwritten registered public offering. In addition, Tesla intends to grant the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to $75 million of additional shares of common stock.

Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO, intends to purchase $20 million of common stock in this offering at the public offering price.

Tesla intends to use the net proceeds from this offering to accelerate the growth of its business in the United States and internationally, including the growth of its stores, service centers, Supercharger network and the Tesla Energy business, and for the development and production of Model 3, the development of the Tesla Gigafactory, and other general corporate purposes.

SolarCity has closed on the sale of $123 million in bonds backed by a portfolio of its solar assets. This is the company's fourth successful securitization, and it remains the only company to complete one.

SolarCity's Class A notes represent $103.5 million in principal with a 4.18% interest rate, and its Class B notes $20 million at a 5.58% interest rate.

SolarCity has pioneered securitization, which involves pooling assets in financial instruments in order to attract investors at lower interest rates. The company announced its first $54 million in securitized notes in November 2013, which was heralded as a breakthrough in lowering the cost of capital for the solar industry.

The National Black Chamber of Commerce, a leading critic of efforts to expand solar energy production in Florida and nationwide, is funded primarily by fossil-fuel energy companies, including Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, according to an analysis by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.

Founded in 1993 by Harry C. Alford and his wife Kay DeBow, the National Black Chamber of Commerce has been a staunch ally of utility and fossil-fuel companies for nearly a quarter century.

Alford has testified before the U.S. Congress at least 16 times. He alleges that clean energy initiatives are disproportionately harmful to black communities in the United States. For instance, in 1998, Alford testified that the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, a commitment by 38 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, would be harmful to minority-owned small businesses.